{"id":10488,"date":"2026-06-27T07:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T11:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10488"},"modified":"2026-06-03T11:39:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:39:41","slug":"isle-of-ruk-and-dungeon-of-klinis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10488","title":{"rendered":"Isle of Ruk and Dungeon of Klinis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Stephen Green
Moonwhisper Magic
OSE
Level ... 3?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The world is shattered, the wizards are gone, and the sea swallows the ruins of their age. Scattered across the waves lie the broken islands of a forgotten empire places of fire, frost, and ancient magic. Among them stands the Isle of Ruk, a frontier of black sands, steaming jungles, and secrets buried beneath volcanic stone. […]  The wizards are dead. Their secrets are not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 64 page adventure uses about seven pages to describe about fifty encounters in two dungeon on an island, with all of the supporting pages being abstracted worldbuilding. There\u2019s a whole lot of generalizations and could be\u2019s in here with actual encounters and locations that don\u2019t come close to realizing the designers vision, I suspect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is an island with a couple of towns on it, a barrow field with sixteen locations, and a three level dungeon with about 45 or so rooms. With got this world where WIZARDS fucked up, they are all gone now but the world is blanketed in ice except for these volcanos around that keep things warm. A pretty decent number of pages is used to describe all of this, although it plays little to no import on the adventure. It\u2019s just an island with a couple of towns and a couple of adventuring locations. The ice and volcano doesn\u2019t really come through much. There is a volcano\/volcano cultists\/fire spirits, especially in the main dungeon, but that theming is still not really present at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main town is described in a somewhat interesting way, at least in the keys for it. \u201c1. Church of Foki has a large cauldron and offers free food for all.\u201d That\u2019s the first line for the temple location, in bold, as a kind of a location header. It\u2019s an interesting way to embed the crux of the location in to the key title, allowing you to know immediately what the main thrust of it is. There\u2019s a related concept with dungeon keys that I sometimes talk about, where instead of \u201c11.\u201d or \u201c11. Bedroom\u201d you put something like \u201c11. Mildewed Victorian Bedroom.\u201d In that instance you are framing the room encounter, preloading the DMs mind, so they interpret what is to come in the description with a \u201cMildewed Victorian Bedroom\u201d mindset. It\u2019s not exactly consistently used in the town descriptions, but it is present in places and does a great job when it is present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rest of the adventure is much murkier in its descriptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s this abstraction going on, a bit different than other abstractions I generally see. It\u2019s written almost like a regional guide that introduces mysteries without explanation. This is pretty consistent in the overviews of the various areas, which do seem to take up the bulk of the adventure. It comes off with a hefty lean to the purple side of the spectrum. \u201cThin wisps of yellow smoke coil lazily from the darkness within, carrying the acrid tang of sulphur and old fire. The mountain air snatches them, pulling them apart and scattering their scent into the breeze, but the trace remains a lingering reminder of whatever festers in the depths beyond.\u201d That whole last sentence, with the snatching and scattering and festering in the depths beyond. It\u2019s clearly going for inspiration for the DM, but there is FAR too much of it, especially considering the depths beyond don\u2019t really live up to the concepts introduced. It certainly feels like the bulk of the adventure is made of these general overarching theme writing sections that meet more novelization rather than turning in to something concrete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This can then be contrasted with the actual location descriptions in the adventuring sites. \u201c3.7 Firedrake (1) has made its lair here.\u201d That\u2019s not much of a description, eh, for a festering depth? Or, for another one \u201cBlack stone walls. In the middle of the room is an ancient ashy corpse. A Shadow (1) preys on adventurers.\u201d A little more to this, but still not really living up, I think, to the vision the designer had in their minds when putting this down to paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there are a few out of place things present. One room on the second level has a table and two chairs and a wardrobe in it. And a sad eyed bard sitting at the table drinking. Uh \u2026 there are fire spirits. Fire cultists. Gomens. Shadows. And dude is just sitting there in his cups? A dungeon population table can help inspire us to encounters but it does needs to be placed in context. Lost his party? Just hanging out for funsies? Refuge from a cult? The framing here, or complete lack of it besides him drinking in a room with a wardrobe, just is out of place. Minimal keying would have the DM making things up, as they would if populating from a table. A word of two of context would allow the DM to riff. I\u2019m not really sure what to make of something so seemingly out of place. \u201cUh, there are a bunch of civvies on level eight of the balrogs lair having a format dance? Uh \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s just this disconnect. The page count is devoted to the world and generalized framing that is leaning purple while the actual dungeon keys are less than thrilling in the capacity they serve. The vision presented in the world building never really comes to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn\u2019t really show you anything, just a brief overview, this is what an RPG is type of things. We need some meat in a preview to understand if the product is right for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/568698\/dungeon-module-isle-of-ruk?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Stephen GreenMoonwhisper MagicOSELevel … 3? The world is shattered, the wizards are gone, and the sea swallows the ruins of their age. Scattered across the waves lie the broken islands of a forgotten empire places of fire, frost, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ruk.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10489,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10488\/revisions\/10489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}